Covid-19 v/s India and Food Habits

The entire world shattered with the outbreak of covid-19 in China and causing immense deaths. The infection spread in Europe, America and other countries causing havoc with many deaths.
Obviously how can India be the exception to it. I was very worried if the infection can cause so much loss to developed and less populated countries what will happen to India which is a densely populated and developing country with lesser availability of facilities.

The only hope I had, hot weather which is not suitable condition of the virus and better immunity of Indians which might respond well.

And yes, not sure what is exact reason, if all of the above, in last two months it has proven Indians responding well to the infection. Fatality v/s recovery rate is much lower for Indians than the rest of the world which is making us think what could be the reason.
May be our food habits and we getting exposed to infectious environment since birth building our immunity system better.

This covid-19 outbreak is really an alarm to us to go back to our basics and understand our traditions. As rightly mentioned by our PM Modiji, our Ayurveda has many remedies which we believe in but its time to prove it to the world by gathering scientific data for it and we should work on it.

Coming back to traditional food habits, here I am going to share some ayurvedic and scientific reasoning behind our traditional food habits.

Our traditional diet is basically roti, bhakari, rice, veggies and dal. Our diet should be balanced diet

perfect mix of carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. Pulses, sprouts are rich in proteins. Rice, wheat roti, jawar/bajara bhakari are carbs. Bhakari is fibrous which is healthier than roti. Green vegetables rich in minerals. We get vitamins from fruit vegetable like Brengle, Pumpkin, orka, etc. Beans are rich in vitamins as well as proteins. Turmeric, ginger garlic are antiseptics as well as immunity boosters. The asafoetida (heeng), curry leaves which we use for tadaka is also good for health. Little use of spices is also beneficial not only for taste but for health. Use of coconut and oil to certain extend gives required fats to body. Coriander is good for urinary system. Our traditional food is based on Ayurveda and local crops. Butter milk after meal is digestive. Our full meal in comprising of all these items. Addition to it is raita, carrot beetroot salad, pudina chatani ( good for acidity) adds taste as well as are supplementary nutritious food. We should minimize intake of maida, sugar, salt and fried items in our food and increase seasonal local fruits.

Its time we should get back to our tradition, our basics and get away of the habits of fast food. Fast food, pizza, burger should be our occasional food habits. If we learn this even this from this covid outbreak, it will be an achievement.

Blessed to Have You as My Mother in Law

Sulu Mavashi as fondly we call you, It’s hard to believe you are not with us anymore. We will always miss you.

Sulu Mavashi you never treated me as your daughter in law but as your niece so you were never monther in law to me but you were one of favorite mavashi (autnty, monther’s sister). You were always my support. Without your support I wouldn’t have been what I am today. When I was newly married you always advised that lady of house has a difficult responsibility of striking balance to take care of sasural and maika as well. You always encouraged me to not to neglect my paternal family. You always stood by me in every decision, you encouraged me to go onsite and pursue my career goals.

You are the one who gave Sachin the books for IIT preparations.

You have been always inspirational to entire family, you always pampered, loved, cared everyone in the family and were there for everyone in their difficult times. You were the pillar of the family. You were amazing cook and we always enjoyed whenever we visited you or you visited us, especially I won’t forget Gulabjamun made by you. You were perfect blend of modern yet rooted to Indian culture. You taught us to keep the family together. Lots of things to learn from you, Sulu Mavashi.

You have laid such a strong foundation for the family that none of us will let you fail, feel sad ever. Om Shanti!!

Everything is Mitthya (Deceptive)

'Everything is Mitthya (Deceptive)', We get to read this in many books on Yoga. (don’t get confused with Yoga and Yogasanas). I never understood meaning of this when I started reading about it during my twenties. I never asked myself the purpose of my life then. As I got into my thirties I actually started thinking about it and now when I am in my forties I feel everything is Mitthya and I know I am still running behind it.

When you have dreams, when you are working hard to realize them as long as you feel you are on right path to achieve them, you no longer ask question about your existence and you no longer think about the purpose of your life. You may achieve your goals or may not. When you get matured you start realize these things doesn’t really matter. You close your eyes and see yourself and feel oneness (Adwaita) with universe (few may call it as God) is the only the Truth (Satya).

Yes, I loved that state but still not ready to leave Mitthya and explore what is the Truth.

I also feel, you start exploring the Truth when you don’t achieve anything in your life or you achieve everything in your life that you wanted or you are just curious to know what is it more than anything else in life.
Or you just realize everything is Mithya (Deceptive), you start of thinking detachment from everything around you. Lord Krishna also has taught us same thing by narrating Bhagwat Geeta and demonstrating by his own life, do your duties with practicing detachment. Easy to say but difficult to implement. Once you learn this you are not far to know oneness with universe (or God), The ultimate Truth.

It's a journey of a lifetime or probably multiple lifetimes (multiple lifetimes is again ?).

Yahi Hein Right Choice Baby... Aaha!!

I remember the days when I was in search of my life partner. I would say those were the most difficult days of my life. I was not typical marriage material and I was not looking for a typical settled guy. Being a s/w engineer I thought a s/w engineer would be best match for me so that we both can understand each other better and can live a successful married life. But when I actually started interacting with guys and their parents, I came across with weird parameters of matchmaking and I was never a fit for those and I used to think how can a guy and family who try to evaluate me with those parameters be a suitable match for me.
My wish to not get settled abroad was major hindrance to find the best match and I wasn’t ready to give up on that. Another wish of mine was that I should be able to communicate well, share, discuss on all aspects of life and topics with my life partner. He should not be religious. He should be a person with values. All such non typical parameters were part of my matchmaking criteria.
It took me almost 8 years to find me my man, thankfully he also chose me as his lady. (I still don’t know what he saw in me). When we decided to marry, what we had was our educational degrees and some work experience. I remember on our first meeting we discussed outsourcing strategies, economy trends, etc. He did not ask me if I know cooking neither I asked him his salary.
We started our journey with big dreams in eyes and I am very happy today with the time I spent with him. Every day getting assured I made right choice. I am very proud to be married to man who may not be earning in dollars but part of a team developing Indian Products: Trinka, a grammar and language correction AI tool for academic and technical writing and AuthorOne, a manuscript assessment AI tool. We may not have BMW, Audi but dream to have Jaguar :).
What could be better occasion to publish this blog than successful launch of second product, Trinka.

Idolatry (Murtipooja)

Idolatry is the worship of an idol or cult image, being a physical image, such as a statue, or a person in place of God.
In Abrahamic religions, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam, idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than God as if it were God.
In these monotheistic religions, idolatry has been considered as the "worship of false gods" and is forbidden by the values such as the Ten Commandments.
Other monotheistic religions may apply similar rules.
In many Indian religions, such as theistic and non-theistic forms of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, idols (murti) are considered as symbolism for the absolute but not The Absolute or icons of spiritual ideas or the embodiment of the divine. It is a means to focus one's religious pursuits and worship (bhakti).
In the traditional religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Africa, Asia, the Americas and elsewhere, the reverence of an image or statue has been a common practice, and cult images have carried different meanings and significance.
-- Wikipedia

A aniconist king argued with Swami Vivekanand, how can you believe in Idolatry? Swami Vivekanand asked, “what will you do to a person if he spits on your late mother’s painting?”. The king spontaneously answered, “I will punish him.”. Swami said that’s Idolatry.

I feel, common person needs to visualize something surrender to, probably that’s the idea behind idolatry. But now a days people are getting carried away by it and have stopped to understand the meaning behind it.

Bucketlist

This is long time pending blog, actually I should have written it just after watching the movie but for some or the reason I kept delaying it. So now taking advantage of long weekend I have decided to write about it.

The marathi movie, Bucketlist, starring Madhuri Dixit (which is one of the item in Madhuri’s bucketlist to act in Marathi movie) unlike typical marathi movies, either comedy or classic, is little glamorous yet giving some message in very casual way. Although it was not counted as classic movie its very close to me as I can relate to the movie and very fact I liked as it gives message in casual way without emphasizing on it.

It talks about importance of organ donation, how a housewife should also have her own identity than to just losing herself in taking care of family, she also should have opinion and views and which should be respected by the family.

But the main reason its close to me as I do also have bucketlist and that’s my identity withough which I am incomplete. And I continuously keep working on it, 24X7 it’s in my mind; although I don’t have time limit for it.

I won’t mind sharing few items that have been marked tick till now.

1.       Staying independently before getting married and earn.

2.       Walking on streets at midnight with friends

3.       Going onsite in foreign countries not as developer but to work with client on requirement gathering for project

4.       To learn driving 4 wheeler and to own it

5.       Camping and tent stay

6.       Watching India playing at Wankhede (although it wasn’t ICC match, I enjoyed watching legends playing it)
7.       Bird Photography

And lot more yet to be marked completed…… that keeps me alive.